- 10 -
drawn from such individual’s failure to do so, see id. at 621-
622. Petitioners’ reliance on Boyd is misplaced. That case
involved the requested production of certain private books and
papers of the claimants in the context of a forfeiture action by
the United States. See id. at 622, 624. The United States
Supreme Court (Supreme Court) held that both the Fourth Amendment
and the Fifth Amendment prohibited the production of those
private items in a forfeiture proceeding.6 See id. at 634-635.
In the instant case, the requested trust documents are not
the private books and papers of petitioners. Rather, they are
the documents of Sandbar Wholesale Trust and/or Sandbar Real
6Although the Supreme Court acknowledged that a forfeiture
suit by the United States was technically a civil proceeding, it
characterized such an action as “in substance and effect a
criminal one”. Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 634 (1886).
The Supreme Court stated with respect to such suits:
we think that they are within the reason of criminal
proceedings for all the purposes of the Fourth Amend-
ment of the Constitution, and of that portion of the
Fifth Amendment which declares that no person shall be
compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against
himself; and we are further of [the] opinion that a
compulsory production of the private books and papers
of the owner of goods sought to be forfeited in such a
suit is compelling him to be a witness against himself,
within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment to the Con-
stitution, and is the equivalent of a search and
seizure--and an unreasonable search and seizure--within
the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. * * *
Id. at 634-635. In contrast to the forfeiture action considered
by the Supreme Court in Boyd, the instant case is a civil pro-
ceeding and may not in any way be characterized as criminal in
nature.
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